Chapter 45: Memories

His determination was rewarded with something else becoming visible in the distance. It seemed to be a dark pyre with a widening base and a peak engulfed in stormy clouds. It was so impossibly high that he thought it ought to fall under its own weight, but it did not even despite the thick clouds that raged around its top trying to smash it back down. Being so tall, and with the changing weather above it, the tower felt as though it was piercing, stabbing into, the very sky above him, and he had to respect it for that. The structure felt like a beast in itself.

Then he realized why. The whole thing was moving on its own, twisting around itself, and was not solid. Instead, it was made up of two great strands wrapped around each other, made from repeating units, and they were joined by bridges between them that were evenly spaced down their lengths. Then, at either end, the strands were split apart and the cross-bridges were broken so that the two spirals fell separated from each other, and the material of their links was suspended, clotting up the air around them. It was a truly magical sight. At the bottom, the material broken to separate the strands flew about their bases, making the appearance of it being wider at the bottom and at the top, pieces were being pulled away - maybe even added - by the vicious winds.

He just had to get nearer. Just what was being shown to him now? It was glorious, and he unconsciously hurried just to get a better view, stopping only when he feared that he would get caught up in the splitting process taking place at the base and with the warm winds pressing onto his face.

There was a bright spherical light there that the strand's joining parts were moving down and into, which seemed to be responsible for separating them. It worked slowly but still evidently was achieving its purpose as the helix split and the individual spires faded into nothing before they impacted the floor. He then noticed, now being closer, a figure who was outlined by the blinding yellow light so that he could not properly make them out.

They were stood roughly thirty feet from the ground, which did seem a little odd, but Kira was well used to odd by now, and he wondered if he should try calling to them excited that this spectacular thing might be his way out.

To save him the hassle, they called out to him in a feminine voice, but he did not feel emboldened by what they said, "You didn't give up then?" they asked him.

"Give up?" he replied, raising his voice to be heard.

"Yes, you didn't give up when you saw all of those people."

"I don't think that I saw them. I'm fairly certain that they were fakes being controlled by something else."

"So you saw through it," she stated, and he had assumed that it was a 'she' based on the voice.

"What happens now?"

"You're absolutely pathetic."

"Pathet…"

"You betrayed your friends; you are absolutely disgusting."

"I wasn't myself," Kira shouted back, trying to justify his own actions.

"A rubbish excuse," she scoffed, and he had to agree with her, "I suppose that means that you're so horrible you don't even have any regrets."

Kira thought about this for a while, and he almost replied before an idea came to him, and he said, "Shouldn't you already know?"

He hoped that her reply would confirm if she really could read his mind or not, and it did, "I know your memories. I don't need your mind to know how terrible you are."

"How do you know my memories?"

"Anyone would if they were here."

"Here?" asked Kira.

"In your mind," came the reply, "Just look around."

This raised more questions than it answered, but he immediately saw it to be true because of the tower before him. Each cross-bridge held an image, all of which he recognized, that depicted memories. They were all of his memories. The old ones were being destroyed at the base, as he slowly forgot them, and, at the top, new images were being added to the helix that showed his recent memories of walking through the empty abyss. This tower of imagery must have been how the figure had managed to accurately depict people from his past.

"Anyway," she said, "It's probably time we get started…."

Kira ignored her and instead tried to start a more peaceful conversation with her that could lead to him getting out of his own mind, "Who actually are you?"

But, she immediately shot him down, "I'm the one asking questions; you're the one who will realize that you should hold some regret!" and she leapt from her perch, deftly landing a mere four strides from him.

Amusingly, she was quite a bit shorter than him, so that he found himself staring at her forehead once she had landed, and his attention was immediately caught by her ears. Not mounted atop her head, like with a demi-human's, they were where any normal person's might be but they were sharply pointed. Kira had never heard of a species like this and so, given everything, assumed that she may be some type of yokai that he had previously been unaware of. Thinking this, he again damned himself for not encouraging Cat to keep talking, about various different species, when he had admitted to being a yokai himself.

Apart from the ears, she appeared to be mostly humanoid with long, flowing dark hair, much like Aura's, and quite wide red eyes, which again betrayed her as being something else. Kira also noticed how she was missing a tail and almost certainly was not a changeling as he guessed that this was her usual form. She was wearing quite tight-fitting leather clothing that Kira could not recognize as any uniform, particularly since it ended in a white skirt. However, trying to keep his eyes upwards was not difficult since he already had to look quite far down to maintain eye contact.

"Do you have a name?" he asked her, again trying to make some conversation.

"Unimportant," she replied, and she turned away from him to walk around the base of the tower of his memories. Kira was obliged to follow as it wasn't like he had anything else to be doing.

Once they had made it roughly halfway around, she abruptly turned and walked directly towards the mess of detached, breaking memories and the bright ball of light that was clearly responsible for destroying the tower's base. Given that she was moving towards one particular slab of memory so confidently, it seemed that they would do him no harm, and he stepped towards it too. Upon touching it, she pressed firmly upon it, and the memory's surface moved away from her, like syrup, before absorbing her fully as she moved further inside. Kira did the same, stepping inside, and he thought it felt much like when he had passed into the painting back in Ostermark.

However, this was no painting. Instead, they were now standing in a backstreet of Illyria. The sun hung high in the sky, and he could feel its unbearable pressure upon him as soon as he stepped from the shade and into the middle of the alley. It was much like an alley in Ostermark, with a central channel where muck and waste would flow, but it had many key differences, such as the buildings on either side not being made of wood and stone but instead a type of yellow mud that set hard in the heat. The windows in these structures were small and shaded by wooden shutters to conserve a cool interior, and their roofs were flat, not having to worry so much about torrential rains.

He recognized exactly where he was because he had a memory of this place that had stuck with him for a long time, and he groaned as he saw that that was exactly what he was to be shown. His host, within his own memories, led him back into the shade. She stood by him to watch as a much younger Kira, wearing the white and loose clothes that people wore to not overheat in this environment, entered the alley. He ran down it, panting with effort, and threw himself into the cover beside where the older Kira was stood, next to the wall, forcing his older self to jump out of the way. Tentatively, Kira tried to touch the boy he knew was him, but his hand slid straight through and he retracted it, feeling the non-human's eyes on him.

"Watch," she said, "You were even a bad person as a child."

"That's unfair," started Kira, but he was cut short when he heard more voices, the voices of other children, coming from the street's entrance.

A group of perhaps eight of them all ran past, clearly looking for something, or rather someone, as Kira remembered this well. One of them, an unusually blonde child given that they were in Illyria, skidded to a halt and detached themselves from the group to check that the alley was empty of who they were after. The boy started walking exactly up to where Kira's younger self was hidden, who now pressed himself further against the wall to try and evade notice. This was to no avail.

His pursuer had noticed him and ran up to stand directly before him. In this situation, the younger Kira should not have been too intimidated as the two of them were roughly the same age and size, but he was terrified, knowing that he was in the wrong. "Give it back!" his pursuer shouted at him.

Internally conflicted, Kira had to watch, knowing that his younger self could do no such thing, having already spent the coins on a toy for himself. He had found them, abandoned, on a stone ledge and thought that he may as well have taken them for himself. He hadn't known then that they had belonged to a group of people that needed them far more than himself, as was evidenced by the blonde boy's ripped clothes and how Kira had been living in the palace.

"I don't have it," muttered the younger Kira, refusing to look at his accuser.

"You have to!" said the boy, and he stepped forwards, over the central channel, to push Kira's younger self against the wall.

Knowing exactly what would happen, Kira tried to hold his younger self back, but he again slipped through his target. He was then forced to watch as he had panicked and pushed back against the boy who tripped, fell backwards, and cracked his head against the ridge on one side of the central channel. There was definitely a bit of blood, but Kira did not stay for long, sprinting away and leaving his older self alone with the girl.

Kira wanted to stay, to see what happened to the boy, and maybe get some closure on it, but when his younger self left, the scene froze as he could only be shown what had been held within his memories.

"Why show me this?" he asked, "It isn't exactly relevant to what's happening now…."

"I wanted to make sure of something. Do you have regrets, having seen something like this?"

"No," Kira replied, more confident in himself but, before he could explain his conclusion, she was gone and out of the memory.

He followed after her, pushing back through the section of air that he had entered by and arriving back inside of the apparent emptiness of his mind. Without waiting for him, she led him towards another memory, one that flashed with a bit of green and a greyer sky betraying the fact that it had taken place within Anadora. "Let's try something more recent," she stated as she went inside.

This time he emerged into a space with a castle's window, through which he had seen the outside and the sky, and he recognized where he was as being the central room in the royal apartment in Neuverie. On the other side of the room, to which he was standing, his youngest brother and sister were play-fighting on the floor. It seemed that this time he was going to be made guilty using his own family. But, he would not wait for this to happen; seizing the opportunity now they were stood together, he turned to his companion to tell her, "I'm not regretful, but please let me say why. It's because although I've made mistakes and don't like many of my actions, I've always done what I thought the best thing to do was in those situations, meaning that I don't have to regret."

"Wow, that's a rubbish philosophy," she replied, "But let's put it to the test." and she turned to face the door that led into his own room.

Owen flung it open, who led a now only slightly younger Kira out into the central space. There he paused for a moment to deliver the line, "Children, huh," and Kira could see his past face wrinkling as he disguised distaste, probably thinking, but you're a child too.

The girl turned back to him, saying, "When you got back here, what effort did you make to befriend your family?"

"None," whispered Kira quietly.

"You don't feel regret?" she asked.

Here Kira paused for a moment, but he still managed to continue, "No, I did what I thought was best: prioritising my studies of the nation's situation over my own, or my family's, happiness."

"Oh, come on," she scoffed, "You didn't even have a moment to show them that you cared?"

He was going to reply to tell her about the few minutes he had spent with Maria but, realizing how bad that sounded with it being the only time he had actually spent time with a sibling, he kept his mouth shut. Owen then led the memory's Kira out and down some spiralling stairs towards the castle's yard where they would do some sparring. He remembered what had happened then, but he was unsure as to what he had done so wrong at this moment that his mind's jailer would choose to show it to him in particular.

"Know what you did wrong?"

"No..." lamented Kira.

"Urrgghh, just watch; see if you can figure it out. Then you'll have to have regrets because you'll see how, even when you're trying your best, you're just an idiot."

"But that's the whole point," replied Kira frantically, "I was still trying my best…" but she shushed him and bade him watch.

The fight went pretty much exactly as he remembered. He and his brother circled each other for a while, had several clashes, and Owen ended up on the floor. Knowing that he had to be missing something, Kira tore his eyes away from the conflict and looked at the crowd watching. That was when it hit him. There was a crowd of important people watching. He had been so worried about not being humiliated himself that he had taken sparring with a child, his own brother, way too seriously and embarrassed him in front of everyone who was anyone in their home town. He had not only refused to get to know or spend time with his family but, to an outsider, it appeared that he had also gone out of his way to humiliate them.

This had not been his intention, and he cursed himself for being such a terrible older brother. Surely an older brother was meant to protect any younger siblings and not put them in harm's way? He hadn't even really thought of them when they had died. That was absolutely disgusting behaviour that he realized he was terribly guilty of. Knowing what he had done wrong, Kira turned to his guide and told her, "I was so worried about being embarrassed, that I embarrassed my brother… it was a mistake. I admit it, I made a terrible mistake, and I should have been nicer to him. A lot nicer."

"So you have a regret."

"No, recognizing that I made a mistake is different from having to regret it when I know that I always did my best."

"You are so insufferable," she accused him, "You're so buried inside of your own fantasy that you don't properly accept your own shortcomings. How can someone like you be expected to save a friend?"

"Please just let me try!" Kira pleaded with her, and he tried to reach for her shoulder, but she shook him off and left the memory. Again, he could do little else but follow.

This time the memory's sky was darker. The reason for this was obvious. It was getting towards the late evening on the night of his sixteenth birthday. He saw how he was about to use his father's announcement to force the attendant manipulators to make a condition on themselves. This meant he was to be shown the moment that he unknowingly sentenced his family to death by not wording his condition well enough. He had said something about the manipulators not killing, or harming, any of the royal family but, depending on how it was interpreted, that still allowed them to indirectly enable their deaths. He had messed up. Being blinded by what he saw as an opportunity to achieve something, he had missed the flaws in his plan.

Perhaps his fake vision of his father had been correct in telling him that he had acted childishly, and he momentarily found himself agreeing with his host. Maybe he really hadn't felt bad enough about what he had done, and maybe he should accept regrets. But he could not. He could not bring himself to regret what he had done with only the best intentions, no matter how terrible the outcome. Despite this, he still cringed as he heard himself speak and saw faces of concern briefly flicker onto the faces of the more intelligent people in the courtyard who recognized that there were loopholes in his requests. His younger brother, Owen, was one of these people.

Had he been kinder to his family, then perhaps he would have found himself in a relationship where he could confide in his plans to them and then Owen would have seen the loophole, as he did then. That way, none of what came after would have happened. Again, though, he did not regret only lament that his younger self had acted this way, and he resolved that, should he escape, he would then act more kindly to everyone.

Then a new thought hit him. Why not start with the kindness now? Why not try and befriend this girl who he had found alone within his mind? He had tried before, solely with the intention of trying to find a way of escape, but perhaps his insincerity had come through. This time he would try with honest intentions that way, should he fail to find a way back to Cat, no matter what happened, he wouldn't be alone in his mind. Ignoring the crowds, he turned to her and asked, "Are you the person who was in the sword? Are you the sword, I mean?" trying to show an interest.

This was an idea that had slowly come to him because he recalled how the sword had had an aura of its own, how he had appeared here when he had touched it and how she had a similar feel to the blade. "Yes." she simply replied, looking back over at him.

"I've heard of enchanted objects, but how did that happen? Have you always been attached to the blade, like I've mostly been attached to my body, or were you attached to it by some manipulator?"

"Look," she sighed, "You're really not getting this, are you? I wanted to show you that you should have regrets and that you've been a terrible person, yet all you do is refuse to accept this and try to befriend me so that you can leave and cause more trouble." however, there did seem to be a shadow of uncertainty hidden within her voice.

"I don't know how to convince you that I'm sincere, but all I want to achieve now is to save Cat and, selfishly, if I can't achieve that, I don't want to be stuck here forever looking at my failings."

"Great, so will you ever accept them?"

"Not my point," returned Kira, taking a risk but hoping she would see that he was speaking truthfully, "If I'm to be stuck here forever, and I understand why you might not let me out, then I at least want to get along with you. It's bad for both of us if we don't get along, you know, and it must have been lonely for you being here alone for, well, I don't know how long."

"I honestly can't tell if you're lying," she told him.

"I'm not, believe me."

"That's something that a liar might say," she said to end the conversation on a playful note as she left the memory, it having not been paid any attention.

Outside, they remerged below the impossible spire of memories and took a moment to watch its swirling mass, extending far above them, as it was quite a beautiful sight. The ground rippled under his feet, forming low hills and features that he had never seen before to bring a bit of life into the abyss, and Kira thought that this might be a sign of progress. He did not know if continuing to press her was a good idea, but he simply had to know, so he asked her, "Does an equal amount of time pass outside as inside here?" because, if it did, then Cat would likely be dead by now.

Waiting with bated breath for her response, he was relieved when it came, "I can control how much time passes in here relative to outside – I can't make time go faster here than outside though – so no time at all has passed since you touched the handle."

"Thank you," Kira replied, unable to stop himself from smiling.

"I wonder; do you actually care?"

"Of course I do," stressed Kira, "Cat was the only person to stick with me and the only person who I now have a chance of saving."

Kira followed her around to the entrance to a new memory, it looked to be one involving Sadis and Thea, and he wondered what he had done wrong that time, but she inexplicably turned to walk away from it. Not knowing what this meant but sensing it to be a good thing, he followed after her. To his surprise, the low folds in terrain that had appeared before his eyes were now covered in luscious green grass and occasional tufts of flowers, but he could not remember seeing this change ever occur. They followed a stone path together, for around three minutes, away from the tower and up onto one of the rises. From there, they had an excellent view of it twisting before them, and Kira followed her to sit on the grass and watch it.